The present invention relates to an automatic document feeder for an electrophotographic copying machine and, more particularly, to a paper speed control device of an automatic document feeder for controlling the discharge speed of a document from an electrophotographic copying machine.
An electrophotographic copying machine produces an electrostatic latent image onto a photoreceptor corresponding to a pattern image of a document such as a book to be copied. Toner particles are electrostatically attracted to the latent image, so that the latent image becomes visible as a toner image. The toner image on the photoreceptor is transferred onto a copy paper via a transference charger. An automatic document feeder may be, if desired, coupled to the copying machine for automatically and sequentially feeding a plurality of documents to a light scanning table to subsequently copy the documents. The plurality of documents to be copied are piled initially on a document tray. The copied documents are subsequently discharged from the automatic document feeder to a discharge tray.
When the plurality of copy documents are discharged, conventionally, they may be scattered and in disarray because of high speed document transport from the document feeder.
This tends to crumple and wrinkle the documents. It is therefore desired to provide an improved document feeder for discharging the copy documents at low speed.